Friday, July 10, 2015

Secret Gov't-Paid Child Sex Change Surgery: Oregon

Parents are shocked to learn that the Oregon Health Authority has been authorized since January to use taxpayer Medicaid funds to pay surgeons to sexually mutilate their children without parental notification, but sexual revolutionary bureaucrats say the secrecy is essential because children may commit suicide if parents were to be involved.

"It is trespassing on the hearts, the minds, the bodies of our children. They're our children. And for a decision, a life-altering decision like that to be done unbeknownst to a parent or guardian, it's mindboggling."-- Lori Porter, Parents' Rights in Education

The list of things 15-year-olds can't do legally in Oregon is long. They can't drive, smoke, give blood, use a tanning bed or get a tattoo.

However, since earlier this year the new Oregon Health Evidence Review Commission policy allows them to get drugs to suppress puberty and even a sex change operation without parental consent, and the state will subsidize the cost.

The decision was made by HERC, which is in charge of deciding what Oregon's Medicaid plan will cover. With no public debate, it began covering cross-sex hormones, puberty-suppressing drugs and sex reassignment surgeries in January.

The Oregon Health Authority could not say how many children have been treated by the state for gender dysphoria since January. HERC estimates it will lead to one less suicide attempt a year and cost about $150,000.

. . . under a first-in-the-nation policy quietly enacted in January that many parents are only now finding out about, 15-year-olds are now allowed to get a sex-change operation. Many residents are stunned to learn they can do it without parental notification -- and the state will even pay for it through its Medicaid program, the Oregon Health Plan.

While 15 is the medical age of consent in the state, the decision to cover sex-change operations specifically was made by the Health Evidence Review Commission (HERC).

According to a 2008 study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, "most children with gender dysphoria will not remain gender dysphoric after puberty."

Dr. Paul McHugh, who led the Johns Hopkins Psychiatry Department and still practices, said Oregon's policy amounts to child abuse. "We have a very radical and even mutilating treatment being offered to children without any evidence that the long-term outcome of this would be good," McHugh said.

"To a large degree, I think the jury is still out on these procedures and whether or not they're legitimate," says Republican state Sen. Jeff Kruse, who sits on Oregon's Senate Health Care Committee. He says gender reassignment procedures are "elective" and "dubious at best."

Oregon's Health Evidence Review Commission decided to look into coverage for gender dysphoria last year. Until then, it had been lumped in with conditions like pedophilia and fetishism.

Adolescence, with its accompanying bodily changes, can be an awkward time for anyone—but puberty can be even more difficult for transgender teens as voices change, Adam's apples and breasts emerge, and the androgyny of childhood is lost. Often, the experience is accompanied by deep depression and thoughts of suicide.

The country's attitude toward the transgender community is shifting, with the once rarely-discussed topic moving further into mainstream conversation. The nascent acceptance of transgender people has important consequences for their medical care, and earlier this month, Oregon became the first state in the country to offer drugs that delay the onset of puberty for transgender adolescents enrolled in its Medicaid plan.

For 15 years, clinics in the U.S. and Europe that treat transgender children have prescribed these drugs to stop their bodies from maturing. The idea behind the treatment is twofold: First, it buys patients time to make an informed decision on how and if they want to physically transition to the gender with which they identify. And second, if they do decide to go through with the transition, puberty-suppressing drugs make the process smoother. By staving off breast development, for instance, an adolescent undergoing a female-to-male transition wouldn't have to undergo chest reconstruction surgery. But the medication offers mental benefits as well: Teens who are already living as the gender they identify with won't be “outed” by their bodies, and they won't have to go through puberty for the wrong gender, which research has shown can cause depression and suicidal thoughts. . . .

Despite being relatively new, the treatment is becoming a standard in care for transgender adolescents. . . .

“We know adolescents who were suicidal—terrified of going into puberty,” said Jenn Burleton, executive director of the TransActive Gender Center in Portland, which works with about 400 transgender youths and their families and was instrumental in pushing the state to cover puberty suppression drugs.

Puberty suppression meds, which cost $750 to $1,200 a month and are often not covered by private insurers in gender dysphoria cases, have been used for several decades to treat precocious puberty. They work by blocking the brain’s release of proteins that stimulate hormones producing secondary sex characteristics, such as breasts and menstruation or facial hair and Adam’s apple.

The effects are completely reversible, said Veronica Gómez-Lobo, a pediatric obstetrician/gynecologist with the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. As soon as children stop taking the drug, they move into puberty.

Gender dysphoric teens typically start suppressive therapy at the onset of puberty and continue until they’re about 16, when it is generally considered reasonable to start hormone therapy, which may later be supplemented by gender reassignment surgery.

Some concerns exist that delaying puberty could affect the bone mass and brain development that occurs during adolescence . . .